Author: William Harwood

William Harwood has been published in skeptical and freethought journals around the world. The newest of his fifty books is titled Disinformation: Bullshit the Media Encourage You to Believe (World Audience, Inc., 2012).

The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, by Daniel Boyarin (New York: New Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-59558-4687) 223 pp. Hardcover, $21.95. Author Daniel Boyarin’s approach in The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ seems akin to one that believers in Mother Goose and Santa Claus might take. Instead of focusing on …

What Is Man? And Other Irreverent Essays by Mark Twain, edited by S.T. Joshi (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2009, ISBN 978-1-59102-685-3) 230 pp. Paper $16.97. Many commentators have asserted that Mark Twain was essentially a theist who merely denounced elements of religion that failed to live up to its professed ideals. S.T. Joshi, editor of …

What Is Secular Humanism?, by Paul Kurtz (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-59102-499-6) 62 pp. Paper $9.95. What Is Secular Humanism? is not an argument in support of secular humanism. Rather, it is a fairly concise statement of the principles secular humanism espouses and a response to allegations that secular humanism is less moral, …

Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe, by Victor J. Stenger (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003, ISBN 1-59102–018-2) 373 pp. Cloth $30. Peggy Lee once asked in song, “Is that all there is?” and expressed disappointment at the difference between observable reality in which humans often mate …

There are American states in which Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists who kill their children by denying them lifesaving blood transfusions or other medical procedures can escape the consequences of their crime by pleading “freedom of religion.” Currently, thirty-nine states’ civil codes include religious exemptions from child abuse or neglect charges, while thirty-one allow a …